From the archives: Bill O’Reilly’s argument for the existence of God

Now that I’m at Patheos, I expect there will be quite a few readers of Patheos blogs coming to my blog, totally unfamiliar with previous incarnations of The Uncredible Hallq. So I’m going to link to some of my old posts, as part of the extended get-to-know-you process here.

Now I’ve said I think there are no good arguments for the existence of God, but at this point some of you may be wondering why I’d waste time on such an obviously terrible argument. I have several reasons. First, critics of “God of the Gaps” reasoning are often accused of misrepresenting the arguments of believers. Those quotes (which anyone with access to YouTube can verify) show otherwise.

Furthermore, I know (from my own experience and talking to other atheists) that if you’re an atheist and if you’re in the habit of getting into arguments about religion, you will hear O’Reilley-esque arguments from believers fairly often. That arguments like O’Reilly’s are bad arguments isn’t obvious to the many believers who make them. In fact, I’d bet that there are more believers who are impressed by arguments like O’Reilly’s than there are believers who are impressed by the ontological argument.